What is Patch Tuesday for Windows and when is it?

Microsoft's "Patch Tuesday" runs on the second Tuesday of each month. This is the day when Microsoft publishes big update packages for Windows 10, Windows 7, Microsoft Office and its other software.

What is Microsoft's Patch Tuesday?

Sometimes referred to as "Update Tuesday," Patch Tuesday is an unofficial term for the day Microsoft releases update packages for the Windows operating system and other Microsoft software applications, including Microsoft Office.

Because Microsoft fixes vulnerabilities, these patches are not released immediately. Instead, the company is collecting these fixes in a major update that will be released on Patch Tuesday.

Microsoft does this to make the update process as predictable for administrators as possible. IT professionals know that patches arrive on the second Tuesday of each month, and they can plan to test or install them. It should be easier to apply smaller patches on an ongoing basis and be more predictable than large patches that arrive on a random day of the month.

When is Patch Tuesday?

Patch Tuesday runs on the second Tuesday of each month. More specifically, it occurs on the second Tuesday of each month in North America.

Microsoft has no guarantee that these patches and the Microsoft Information Bulletins on these patches will be released. These updates usually arrive around 1

0:00 am Pacific Standard Time, but may be published later in the day.

Windows 10 is checking for updates about once a day. The average Windows PC should automatically download these updates through Windows Update by Wednesday afternoon when it is turned on and connected to the Internet. Of course, administrators can delay and test these updates before deploying them to PCs in their organizations.

Updates are not just released on Tuesdays

As you may have noticed, Patch Tuesday is not the only date update to arrive. In some cases, Microsoft publishes "out-of-band" updates for particularly critical vulnerabilities, particularly those exploited in nature.

However, if a security vulnerability is not exploited in nature, and it is, it will wait until Patch Tuesday releases the update.

Even if you get one or more minor patches in a month, there will be more and more updates on Patch Tuesday. It contains all the updates that did not have to be rushed.

Patch Tuesday is available for "B" updates

In Microsoft Update Usage Patch Tuesday updates are called "B" updates because they are released in the second week of each month.

Microsoft also provides optional update packages in the third or fourth week of the month. They are called "C" and "D" updates. These include fixes and improvements to issues that have no security vulnerabilities. After testing these updates, their fixes will make it to update B on the patch Tuesday of the next month.

These C and D updates are now displayed as "optional updates" in Windows Update on Windows 10.

Patch Tuesday is not just for Microsoft

Other companies have chosen Patch Tuesday to help system administrators update their systems with security patches.

For example, Adobe also publishes security updates to its software, such as: in and Acrobat Reader PDF viewer on Microsoft Patch Tuesday.

Patch Tuesday is not suitable for major Windows 10 updates

Microsoft is now releasing major updates to Windows 10 every six months. The last major update for Windows 10, for example, was the update for May 2019, with the October update Preceded in 2018.

These updates were not released on Patch Tuesday. They are published the day Microsoft releases them.

Even after the official release of every major update, the rollout process is slow. Big updates such as these may not be automatically installed on your PC until months later because Microsoft is now using AI to determine if the update for your hardware and software combination can be safely installed. You can still skip the wait and install it right away. However, Microsoft states that you have a better chance of waiting.

This is in contrast to patch Tuesday updates, which do not include any new features. They contain important security updates and already-tested bug fixes. By default, they are automatically installed for all Windows users as soon as possible.

For information about Windows 10 updates, see the Windows 10 Update History page from Microsoft.